2a : Episode Two : Chasing Memories
by Taidine
Summary: Aelita has an Odd shaped hole in her memory, and the rest of the gang is on a valiant scipazoa chase to get it back.  Now if only XANA would stop possessing the plants... Part of an alternate lateseasontwo story arc.
1. Chapter 1: Paradox

**Episode Two : Chasing Memories**

Soundtrack: Scandal's "The Warrior" (for Sissi)

_This is one of my favorite episodes. Probably third favorite of the 'season.' Why? It follows the proper show format, has a plot that could reasonably be used on the show, doesn't go crazy on the special effects, and manages to completely exclude Kloe. Also, it involves a cool part of the ice sector. Sorry this first chapter is a little late!_

_Taidine_

Chapter One: Paradox 

The muted buzz of a hundred chatting was making Kloe's head hurt. _Everything, _in fact, was making Kloe's head hurt. A blinding, pulsating, vicious migraine had sprung up in a moment of disorientation and lodged itself firmly beneath her jaggedly cut blonde hair. Rubbing her forehead helped not at all, though she persisted in doing so. Light, she had to wrap up this interview and go lie down, the sooner the better.

"I see. Okay, last question: Do you have anything you'd like to say to the students?" She asked wearily.

Her interviewee, black-haired, pink-shirted Elizabeth (alias Sissi) drew breath and Kloe realized this was going to take a while. "Well, first of all…" The shrill voice went straight to her head. Just when she thought this migraine couldn't get any worse.

Not far away, past two long, white tables packed with cheerful students reveling in the joy that is Sunday by discussing absolutely nothing of consequence, an incongruously serious quartet sat hunched over foam trays containing a sauce-drenched substance that was almost certainly meat. "So you have no memory of Odd whatsoever?" Repeated a glasses-wearing boy.

The pink haired girl he was addressing shook her head. "None at all," she replied breathily.

"Wish I could say the same sometimes," teased a boy with brown hair, elbowing the final member of the group who uncharacteristically failed to join the joke.

"It wouldn't be so funny if she'd forgotten you," he told the table at large in high-pitched tones. "I thought I was more memorable then that." Indeed, he was probably the most notable of the bunch: Gravity-defying blonde hair marked with a swatch of purple die and a belly-button tee worn over a long sleeve shirt has that effect.

The pink haired girl tried unsuccessfully to smile. "I'm afraid, Jeremie. What if I forget something else? Something important?"

Odd looked offended. "Hey…"

Jeremie, the boy in glasses, shook his head. "I don't know, Aelita. I'm going to the Factory to try and find out what went wrong." He patted her on the shoulder, then rose, snagging a laptop from under the table. The other three watched him head off through the crowd, dumping his lunch tray and brushing past the trio of journalists taking notes on Sissi before vanishing through the door.

Odd glanced at Aelita's untouched lunch. "Are you going to eat that?"

- - - -

Jeremie sat in a swiveling chair, both hands flying across the keyboard of a computer that would cause a federal technology expert to faint in delight. The immense hard drive in the center of the room had enough processing power to break down a human into computer code or flip the world back days into the past. Sure, Jeremie would probably say the best think about Lyoko was meeting Aelita, but this is the kind of computer geeks like him fantasize about in their most pleasant daydreams.

Right now, the message it displayed was grim.

Pulling up a new window, Jeremie double clicked a picture of a pink-haired girl, causing a pad of buttons not unlike a virtual cell-phone to drop from it. A ring sounded from his earpiece.

_Ring ring._

_Ring ring._

On the third ring, there was a click, then Aelita's breathy voice said, "Jeremie?"

"I think I found out what happened, and it's not good." Jeremie dragged the cell-phone image to one corner of the screen so it wouldn't obscure the flickering green lines of code he was perusing. "How fast can you guys get here?"

There was a pause and a murmur as Aelita consulted with the others. "We're leaving now, Jeremie," she told him, and he nodded, typing a set of numbers into the program on the screen. "We'll be there in a few minutes."

"Good," said Jeremie, closing the window with a last firm, "Hurry!"

Then he was back to the swarm of brackets and programming, adding in his own shorthand a section here, cutting something there. That ought to do it.

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

"Huh?" Another popup materialized on a screen to the left, showing a tall, pale cylinder wreathed in red. "Impossible!"

- - - -

Three students pounded dirt just outside the cafeteria, barreling towards the woods. Several kids trying to enjoy a relaxing day in the park shouted after them indignantly as they blew past. Sissi stood up from her comfortable seat on a bench to find out what all the fuss was for.

"Where are those three going in such a hurry?" She shrilled. Her usual cronies made various noises to the riff of 'dunno.' With a pout, she crossed her arms across her chest and sat down, only to pop to her feet again an instant later. "I have to… go fix my makeup."

- - - -

Some ways away, Yumi was trying to have a peaceful lunch with her family. Of course, when one has a younger brother, this isn't as easy as it sounds.

"So then _William _wants to go out with her! Right, Yumi? I bet he's going to _duel _with Ulrich over it! Hey, Yumi, who would win?"

"Mom, tell him to shut up. Please?" Said Yumi flatly, lifting a noodle to her mouth. Chopsticks are so much more civilized then sporks.

Her mother glanced over wearily. "Some day, your sister will have a car and she won't drive you anywhere because of this," she told him.

Yumi watched her brother close his mouth with a satisfying click, but a minute later he was sticking his tongue out, so it wasn't much of an improvement. She was almost glad when her phone started ringing.

"Excuse me," she said, dropping from the chair. Taking the stairs two at a time, she rapidly reached the refuge of her room, snatched up her austere black cell-phone, and flipped it open. "Hello?"

It was Jeremie's choked voice at the other end, and he didn't sound happy. "Yumi? We need you at the factory. XANA's launched another attack, and– "

"What? How?" Yumi sounded as horrified as she looked, and that wasn't a patch on how she felt.

"I don't know. It should take longer to regroup, but XANA gets stronger every time we go back in time, so who knows what it's capable of?"

"I'll be right over," Yumi breathed, flipping the phone closed with a grim expression promising painful death to XANA's latest monsters.

- - - -

"So," quipped Odd as the trio entered the woods, slowing down to catch their breath, "Let's play 'Guess XANA's attack'."

Aelita, breathing heavily, only looked confused, but Ulrich barked an oxygen-deprived laugh. "What's left? Pixelized super-elite paratroopers?"

"I was thinking evil mechanical birds," Odd tossed back.

Aelita glanced around uneasily; something wasn't right. She couldn't say exactly what it was or how she knew – it wasn't a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach or a prickling on the back of her neck. It came from the same part of her that sensed pulsations or changed the landscape of Lyoko (those memories were still in tact – perhaps she hadn't lost as much as she feared).

"Too many trees," she whispered, spinning slowly, trying to get a better location. Ulrich and Odd broke off their good-natured banter, leaving Aelita in silence as she felt fruitlessly for the underlying code. As always on Earth, there was nothing _too _feel, as if the overload of sensory information flooding her nose, ears, and skin blanked out the subtler feeling of order. But there was… something… there.

Aelita was staring at a spot of woods behind the boys when it erupted in blue sparks.

"Looks like our curiosity is about to be satisfied," Odd grinned. "You go ahead, Aelita. We'll deal with whatever XANA's dished up."

The pink-haired girl glanced at Ulrich for confirmation. At his nod, she hurried off.

- - - -

Odd broke away from Ulrich a few feet away from Aelita, making a circling gesture. His friend nodded and headed to the right, leaving Odd to curve left into the woods. The autumnal detritus on the ground wasn't the best medium to move silently through, but Odd's Lyoko form wasn't cat-based for nothing. Even if he wasn't as graceful here as in Lyoko, dried leaves weren't much hindrance.

Judging the circle wide enough, he turned and headed towards the place Aelita had seen a light show. Hopefully Princess there could remember how to get to the Factory… Well, whatever XANA's threat, one of them could probably deal with it. He'd send Ulrich after Aelita once – speaking of Ulrich, there he was, on the other side of a small clearing, directing at him a puzzled expression. Odd responded with an exaggerated shrug. He didn't see any evil XANA-controlled monsters either. For a moment, both boys stared at and around the clearing; besides a pile of leaves raked into the center of it, it hardly looked different from the one they had just left.

After a long moment of confusion, Odd walked towards his friend on the other side. "Well, I– "

FWAARP!

With a very strange, deep, and difficult to transcribe sound, the pile of leaves rose up into the vaguely humanoid shape XANA seemed to favor.

" –wasn't expecting that," Odd finished. The leafmonster let out a crackling roar.

- - - -

Aelita began running again as soon as the boys vanished into the woods, gasping for air and far from pleased. She worried about them – at least, she worried about Ulrich, and Yumi and Jeremie. She probably worried about Odd, too, though she couldn't remember at the moment. And, perhaps a touch uncharitably, she worried about herself. If XANA had spaced out his attacks, she might be running right for a trap.

Suddenly, a humanoid shape detached itself from behind a tree. Aelita tried to halt her forward motion, but her feet had other ideas. Next thing she knew she was sprawled in an ungainly heap on the ground, staring helplessly upwards.

Fortunately, the figure she had almost collided with didn't appear to be a creation of XANA. It was a rather short girl with long, sleek black hair, heavily mascara-ed eyes, and a supercilious expression. "Aelita," said the stranger in shrill, nasal tones. "Weren't Odd and Ulrich with you?"

To her growing horror, Aelita began to realize while she didn't know his pink-shirted stranger, the other girl knew her, and there was only one explanation for that: another gaping hole in her memory, shaped like the girl in front of her. Aelita's mind raced. _I don't know who she is. She's asking about the boys. She might be on the team. It's only fair to warn her._

"Aelita. Yoo-hoo! Did you hit your head when you fell, or do you always look like that?"

"Odd and Ulrich went back that way when XANA attacked," said Aelita, ignoring the taunts. Well, she hadn't broken anything in the fall… "They might need your help."

The girl she couldn't remember looked at her strangely. "XANA? Odd's rock group?" Before Aelita could respond, though, she stuck her prim nose in the air and vanished between a pair of tree-trunks.

Aelita stared into the woods for a long moment and hoped she hadn't made a grievous mistake.


	2. Chapter 2 : Fall into Winter

**Season Three : Episode Two : Chasing Memories**

Soundtrack: Scandal's "The Warrior" (for Sissi)

Chapter Two: Fall into Winter

With the hiss and click of complicated machinery unbolting, the intricately crafted doors of the elevator unhooked and slid open. Aelita stepped out, breathing hard. "Jeremie? How many of us are there?"

"Uh…" Jeremie had to think about that one. "Us who know about XANA? Just the five: You, me, Yumi, Ulrich, and Odd."

Aelita's mouth slanted in an expression that was equal parts regret, sheepishness, and 'oops.' "How about a girl with a pink shirt and lots of eye makeup? I sent her to help Odd and Ulrich."

Jeremie actually turned around in his swivel chair. "Sissi is helping Odd and Ulrich?" He demanded incredulously. Aelita's sheepish-regretful-anxious expression increased and she gave a nod with a little hum of assent. Jeremie turned back to the computer with a fatalistic shrug. "Well, no changing that now. Get down to the scanner. Yumi's already there. We'll deactivate the Tower, then get your memories back from the scipazoa and launch a return to the past. No problem." He seemed to be reassuring himself as much as Aelita, but she wasn't about to call his bluff; she merely stepped back into the elevator and headed down to the scanner room.

- - - -

Odd leapt back as the leafmonster extended a pair of pseudopods to flail about. Sizing the creature up, he moved backwards to the tree line and took a running leap, flying above the creature's writhing appendages to land on its 'head.' His feet went straight through, and the entire creature collapsed in a shower of dried leaves and sparks.

Ulrich hefted a stick and glared at the drifts of foliage now scattered across the clearing. Odd stepped out of the center, brushing off his hands. "Piece of cake. XANA's losing his edge."

Ulrich shook his head. "No way it's that easy."

Blue filaments of electricity crackled over the leaves. They lifted into the air and coalesced into a vaguely humanoid shape. Before it could act, Ulrich struck, lashing out with his stick, held two-handed like his Lyokan katana. It swept through the body of the leaf-monster, which collapsed once more.

Odd crossed his arms over his chest in a leisurely fashion. "Is that all you got?" He jeered at the inanimate leaves.

"Activating Towers without a rest must have weakened XANA's attack," said Ulrich. Like he knew.

A crackle of blue lightning, and the leaves were swept together once again. Odd dispatched this incarnation of the monster with a swift kick. "Well, I think you can handle this. I'll head to the Factory," he told his more serious friend, and headed off.

- - - -

Sissi was most displeased. She must have been hiking through this forsaken belt of woods for a good fifteen minutes now, and no sign of Odd or Ulrich. Maybe that stuck-up Aelita had been lying to her. Just like the pink-haired priss… breaking into the group that had rejected her, Sissi, for a year, by dint of being Odd's cousin, then having the nerve to send her, Sissi, on a wild goose chase through the most miserable piece of…

"Hey, Sissi, what are you doing here?" She would have recognized that nasal voice anywhere, even without the accompanying figure in purple and improbably spiked hair.

"Odd, what are you doing here? You seem to have… misplaced… Ulrich and Aelita," Sissi said, saccharine, setting herself in front of the boy.

"I really don't have time for this, Sissi," Odd told her, trying to step around. She edged to her right so she continued to block him. Near her foot, a spark of blue glinted among the leaves.

"I see you're busy," Sissi agreed in dulcet tones. The dead foliage on the ground twitched. "So why don't you just tell me what you're running away from?"

"Umm… No," said Odd, stepping to the other side. Sissi blocked again. He feinted, then dove to one side…

…the leaves erupted from the ground and slammed into him, nearly engulfing him, leaving only his head visible outside the crackling foliage…

…and Sissi, screaming, launched an impressive kick at the heart of the monster, causing it to collapse to the ground.

Odd stood up from where the monster had dropped him, grinning and eyeing the temporarily motionless leaves. "Great. This was supposed to be Ulrich's job." He glanced at Sissi. "Nice kick, by the way."

"I took a martial arts class to impress Ulrich," she squeaked bitterly, "not that _he _ever noticed. What _is _that?"

"It would take too long to explain," Odd said, "You should probably get back to school."

There was a crackle of warning, and the leaves rose up again, swinging a dead branch in the direction of Odd's head. With a grim expression, Sissi launched another flurry of blows, collapsing the creature again. "No," she said, voice tremulous but determined, "I think I'll stay."

- - - -

"Scanner, Yumi. Scanner, Aelita," came Jeremie's voice. Both girls stepped into the tall, burnished cylinders and turned to face the doors as they slid shut. Light rose from either floor.

"Transfer, Yumi. Transfer Aelita." A flash; a stomach-dropping sensation of weightlessness. Aelita's hair rose into an improbable pink confection as though caught in a strong updraft. Yumi closed her eyes and tried to keep her feet firmly on the ground for as long as possible.

"Virtualization," said Jeremie in satisfied tones. Vision was filled with a dark, red-striated tunnel, rushing past. Both girls experienced the indescribable and not altogether pleasant sensation of being dissembled into their component atoms, having said atoms converted to computer code at a subatomic level, momentarily not existing, then being slammed back together at high speed in a virtual body subtly different from your real form in enough small ways to be disturbing. Then, of course, you have to stick the landing.

Yumi hit the ground lightly, turning the kinetic energy of her drop into horizontal motion with a forward roll. By the time she came to her feet, she had pulled both fans out of her sash and flipped them open, ready for anything.

Except… nothing happened.

The pair had been set down in the ice sector. An eerie blue glow illuminated the landscape. The ground itself was flat and even, but a forest of twisted ice columns rose from it. The tortured pillars glinted white in the eerie blue light, causing weird reflections beneath them like the dapples on a seabed – but nothing moved.

Warily folding her fans, Yumi spun three hundred sixty degrees on one small foot. Still seeing nothing, she ventured a small whisper. "Jeremie?" Her voice echoed off the vaulting columns of ice.

"No monsters on screen," reported the disembodied voice of the computer operator. "Something must be up…" A green grid materialized before them, gaining color and solidity until it became the scooter-platform of Yumi's overwing. "Your transport. The Tower's dead ahead."

Aelita peered between the slender columns of ice, sighting a glimpse of red. "I think I see it," she said. Yumi nodded and stepped aboard the overwing. Aelita followed, wrapping her arms about her friend's waist, and Yumi tightened her grip, sending them off into the labyrinth of ice.


	3. Chapter 3 : Closure is for Children's

**Episode Two : Chasing Memories**

Soundtrack: Scandal's "The Warrior" (for Sissi)

Chapter Three: Closure is for Children's Stories

Yumi expertly threaded her overwing between the twisted columns of ice, towards the Tower. Aelita hung on to her kimono and peered over her shoulder, keeping tabs on the Tower. Still no monsters… the quiet bothered her. Maybe she had been spending too much time on Earth, where extraneous white noise permeated everything and the wind would be howling in her ears at this speed – the overwing generated its own sound effects, but nothing near the acoustics of a similar Earth vehicle. Or maybe it was the lack of monsters. At this point, so near to a Tower, the air should have been frying with lasers. But there was the Tower, a corpse-pale shaft wreathed in red pointing skyward, and still nothing inimical had appeared. Yumi pulled her overwing up next to the Tower and braked hard; Aelita leapt lightly off and looked around.

"Uh-oh," came the voice of Jeremie, "XANA's late, but he's still trying. Contingent of mantas heading your way. Hurry it up, Aelita."

"Mmhmm," replied the elf, walking into the wall. Into, as in collision. She touched her smarting forehead with one hand. "Hm?"

"Mantas approaching fast. Something wrong at your end?" asked the computer operator. Aelita banged her palm against the bone-smooth curve of the Tower wall; it felt completely solid under her hand. "Jeremie, I can't get in!" She said frantically, "I- I can't remember how!"

"But- you got into the last Tower!" Jeremie choked, "Unless the code corruption is progressive, you should have no problem."

Aelita walked the circuit of the Tower's base, trailing her fingers along the wall. "Still nothing."

Jeremie tapped his keyboard rapidly. "Okay, change of plan. You'll have to get the memories back first. I have a program that will isolate the memories downloaded into the scipazoa, to be retrieved by us." There was a whisper of mechanical sound, and something smooth and heavy materialized in Aelita's hand. Lifting it, she found herself staring at a green painted, recurved shortbow and a matching pink-fletched arrow.

"Archery, Jeremie?" She inquired.

"I know you don't carry weapons, but it was the only analogue I could think of. You just need to hit the scipazoa with it," Jeremie responded defensively.

"Speaking of which, we've got company," Yumi broke in. "Aelita – don't fire until you're sure you can hit."

Weaving between the columns of gleaming ice that featured heavily in this part of the sector, a pair of black-and-white mantas lay down a belt of mines in their wake. The scipazoa was nowhere in evidence, but Yumi was willing to bet it was somewhere outside the ring of explosives steadily growing around herself and Aelita. She pulled out a fan with one hand, flipping it open, and grabbed a handlebar with the other. "Jump up and hold on," she instructed her pink-haired companion, and towards the steadily shrinking gap between the two monsters.

- - - -

"Go!" Shouted Odd at the first telltale crackle of blue sparks. Sissi swung a less then impressive kick at the coalescing leaf monster, distracting its attention for a vital moment while Odd leapt at it from behind. Leaves flew. Sissi launched into another martial arts routine in a blur of black, pink, and orange; a lashing, stick-tipped appendage knocked her down, but Odd was already throwing himself at it again with a nasal "Ha!"

"It's getting tougher," he observed, panting, as the thing dissolved back to leafdom. "I think we bought Ulrich enough time. Let's bail!" He took off.

Sissi nodded, breathing even harder - she wasn't used to this sort of exertion – and gamely followed. "But Odd," she observed, "there are leaves everywhere!"

"Well, I don't think…" Blue lightning sparked, and he barely halted his headlong run in time to avoid being engulfed by another forming leaf creature. "Today is not my day." He cut sharply left, slamming into Sissi as a heavy stick swished past their heads, and kicked up his speed. The leaf monster sank down, and a trail of blue sparks sped from it in pursuit of the fleeing pair.

- - - -

Yumi cut her overwing heavily left to avoid an ice column, and Aelita tightened her grip with her free hand. The mantas had nearly met… Yumi let her fan fly into the one on the right, piloting the overwing one-handed. The colorful weapon wheeled through the air with a metallic shriek, slicing a sparking gash along its target's fin-wing. Aelita lost sight of it as they swerved sharply around another column of ice, but Yumi lifted a hand and caught it on the back circle, flicking it shut in a practiced motion before tucking it into her sash. Then it was a clear path to the gap: Yumi squeezed the handlebars, leaned forward.

And they were through, flying much too fast. An ice spire loomed; Yumi shoved Aelita off, and the elf girl tumbled to the ground, trying to protect Jeremie's bow-and-arrow program. There was a crash. Pushing herself up with one hand, Aelita lifted her head to watch vehicle and warrior dissolve into fractal squares. "Jeremie?"

"Yumi's devirtualized, but I've got the scipazoa in sight. It's got a pair or kankrelats as bodyguards, but you shouldn't have to worry about those. Bear right."

Amidst the echoing sculptures of ice, looking almost natural in the wavelike reflections of light, a ghostly, tentacled apparition like some nightmare jellyfish hovered. Aelita rose quickly, gripping the bow and nocking the arrow to the string, although she kept the weapon at waist level, never looking away from the spectral creature. It was closing in on her quickly, not content with what it had stolen, hungry for more of her memories. Short eyebrows knitting in angry concentration, Aelita raised the bow and pulled back to the ornament dangling from one pointed ear. It wasn't going to get any more. It was going to give back what it already had. She took careful aim…

_Zing! _A brilliantly red laser shot past her shoulder. She would have lost the arrow if her hand hadn't tightened convulsively on the shaft. Her eyes darted towards its source; a pair of kankrelats, looking impossibly smug for faceless mechanical domes-on-legs, flanked the scipazoa and had their lasers trained directly on her. "Jeremie, I thought you said they wouldn't fire at me," she protested, raising her bow again. Two lasers made trails through the air to her head. She barely threw herself backwards in time.

"They're trying to make you lose the arrow," Jeremie hazarded. "Don't do anything. I'm sending in Ulrich."

Aelita, lowering her bow to waist level but keeping the arrow flush with the string, began to back slowly away. "Ulrich? When did he get here?"

"When you and Yumi were trying to give me a heart attack on the overwing," Jeremie said, "Scanner."

A scipazoa tentacle lashed towards Aelita. She danced backward and raised her bow.

"Transfer."

_Zing! _Went a warning laser, leaving a smoldering streak along the pale fabric encasing her arm. She refused to flinch.

"Virtualization!"

Aelita drew back her arrow, aiming at the faintly pulsating heart of the scipazoa.

_Zin-zot._

"Playing it a little close there?" Asked Ulrich, lowering his katana. It was faintly blue from absorbing the laser's energy. "Triplicate!"

In a blur of motion, Ulrich split into three identical images. One sped towards each kankrelat; the final doppelganger raised his weapon again, protecting Aelita. "Your move."

Aelita smiled, aimed, and released.

On one of Jeremie's secondary screens, amidst the constant dance of numbers, there was a perceptible flicker as something shifted. "Got it!" He crowed, "Now you have to get to a Tower to reabsorb the -"

"Jeremie," Aelita interrupted over the sound of Ulrich's duplicates slaughtering kankrelats, "I can't get into a Tower."

"Oh, right. You'll have to go to Sector Five, then," Jeremie muttered. His fingers flew across the keyboard: the word SCIPIO appeared on the screen. "Head due north to grab a transport – and watch out, those mantas are still on your tail."

The pair took off through the silent grandeur of the ice columns. Marking their goal was a luminous white orb, branded with XANA's concentric-circles symbol, revolving on its own axis but sliding as steadily forward as though supported by an invisible rail. At the edge of the ice forest, where the ground suddenly dropped into a fantastic glacial cliff, it touched down and rotated open to reveal a gently curved inner wall. Aelita and Ulrich, panting, leapt in as it spun closed.

The blue and white landscape swung sickeningly below them, a geometric collage in ice, snow, and water. Mostly ice – there had been no subtlety involved in naming the sectors. They swooped past spires, curves, and breathtaking drops, dizzying vistas and long, flat stretches. It didn't compare to the ice plains of Earth, but in its own stark way there was something awe-inspiring about the smooth digital landscape.

With a stomach-lurching drop, the transport fell off the edge of the world. Ice melted into blue numbers, a three-dimensional field of them, swarming and obscuring.

The transport landed on a featureless blue-white block and spun open, depositing its slightly queasy cargo. "Okay," said Jeremie's voice, "countdown has begun. Ulrich, you get the switch." The samurai nodded, muttered "supersprint" under his breath, and streaked off across the ever-changing mire of blocks. "Aelita, get to a computer. I'm going to try the overboard."

Aelita imagined the clicking of computer keys. After a moment, a green grid appeared, solidifying into Odd's pink-and-purple delta. She leapt on with both feet and gunned it, extending her specialized senses to the utmost, trying to sense every byte of coding. _Here there be dragons._

The overboard leaped off the edge of the platform. Aelita tilted the nose up and landed smoothly on the top of a second plateau. Sector five had a thing for cubes – the landings were easy, but the drops far less forgiving. Now, the core should be that way...

- - - -

Ulrich ran. Here in Lyoko, silly things like mass and inertia and physical laws didn't limit him. Sure, the designer had programmed them in, but he'd also programmed ways to get around them. For once, Ulrich could take full advantage of his personal back door – the 'supersprint' ability. When traveling with the others, he couldn't run much faster then them, but now he was on his own, with one goal and a time limit. The blocky landscape blurred past him.

"Two minutes," said Jeremie, and Ulrich found himself smiling.

"No problem." He bounded easily over the tops of the blocks, took one flying leap, and pushed the switch into the wall with the heel of his hand. The square he was standing on sunk to floor level, and he leapt off with a flourish, resting one hand on the hilt of his blade. "Mission accomplished. What's next?"

"Turn right and meet up with Aelita," responded the disembodied voice of Jeremie, "Two minutes and forty five seconds."

"Huh?" Ulrich was momentarily nonplussed. He looked up as though trying to peer at Jeremie, through the barrier between the worlds. "Until what?"

"Until XANA cracks my security and downloads the memories I'm holding for Aelita!"

- - - -

Aelita leaned into the tilt of the overboard, holding herself low to decrease air resistance. If there was air resistance in Lyoko…

There was a… blip …in the code streaming passed. She braked the overboard abruptly, wheeling left and screeching soundlessly to a stop as a two-legged creature that seemed to be mostly tail reared up smoothly in front of her. With the slick grace of a serpent, it arched its tail and fired a laser she barely managed to dodge by ducking low to the 'board. With a high-pitched "Mmph!" she gunned her vehicle, speeding past the creeper; before it could readjust its aim, she had made it around an L-shaped bend and out of laser sight.

The corridor she was sailing through widened suddenly into a cavernous room, extending indefinitely up and down, green-tinged emptiness punctuated by hovering white blocks. At the other end, a dark aperture dilated open: Ulrich must have hit the switch. Aelita slowed the overboard, halting at the edge of the abyss to plan her next move. If she hopped to the nearest block, the second would be easy enough to reach, but the third…

Something scratched behind her. Without thinking, she jammed one foot on the gas and jumped. It almost worked; Odd could have done it. Given a little more time to plan, Aelita could have done it. But she made some small error and the 'board slipped – although she made it safely to the first hovering block, her vehicle did not. She watched in despair as the pink and purple shape rocketed across the cavern and smashed against the far wall.

"Didn't mean to startle you," said Ulrich, standing on the ledge she had just vacated.

"Ulrich!" Gasped Aelita, "I'm glad to see you, but… I seem to have lost my board."

"Jeremie, we need the overbike," Ulrich stated, backing up. A running leap carried him across the first gap.

"I don't know if I can materialize something that large in Sector Five, but I'll try," Jeremie offered.

"Wait," Aelita commanded. The green-tinged space was broken, the fragments scattered, but it _didn't have to be…_

Closing her eyes, Aelita dropped gracefully into a meditative pose. Her lips parted, but the sound that swelled through the room wasn't a song. It was just music – the music of numbers as they changed. There was a luminescent green grid, then, where floating blocks had hung, there was smooth floor.

"Nice," Jeremie complimented.

"It used to be whole. I just put it back," responded Aelita, rising to her feet.

"That's great," said Ulrich, "Now run!"

"Right," Jeremie agreed, "One minute, five seconds."

A multisegmented brown creeper reared suddenly before them. Ulrich smoothly unsheathed his katana and leapt at it. The whip like tail rose, aimed, and fired a pair of crimson lasers; one struck Ulrich's leg in a crackle of purple sparks.

Aelita's face grew grimmer as she ran. The sound of lasers behind her crescendoed, and there was a subtle shift in the flow of code that meant simply that she was alone. Ahead of her, the circular door began to iris shut, she couldn't imagine why, but she threw herself in the shrinking opening – not an instant too soon. As she landed uncomfortably on the virtual floor, it clicked shut, leaving her alone in the dark except for a faintly glowing computer screen, floating unsupported at chest-level.

She rested one hand on the screen

IDENTIFICATION: AELITA

CODE: LYOKO

BEGIN MEMORY DOWNLOAD

- - - -

"What… now?" Panted Sissi, leaning against a tree to catch her breath. Odd glanced over his shoulder; with no sign of the leaf monster or the crackle of blue static preceding one, he dropped to the ground in an attempt to regain his wind.

"Well… we'll go… to the… cafeteria," he managed, taking two deep breaths before continuing. "We should be safe there for a while."

"And then?" Sissi squeaked.

"Hopefully Aelita will have shut down the Tower by then."

"Aelita? Tower?" Questioned Sissi.

"I'll explain later. Let's take leafy down one more time and make a break for it." Both dropped into ready stances.

Nothing happened.

After nearly a minute, nothing continued to happen.

"Is it… gone?" Sissi ventured.

Odd looked confused. "I can find out," he assured her, and pulled out his cell phone. Sissi continued to watch the woods, thinly veiled fright in her eyes, as he hit the speed dial, put the phone to his ear, and said – "Jeremie?"

In the Factory, Odd's cell phone window opened. "Yes?" Jeremie answered.

"I take it our princess has dealt with her tower?" Odd asked.

"Yeah," said Jeremie. His voice became suddenly concerned. "Why? Is something wrong?"

"No," said Odd. His voice rose several decibels. "Then why haven't we gone back in time?!"

"Uh… is there a reason we should have?"

"Yeah. Her name is Sissi."

The subject of contention, hearing one half of an already confusing conversation, looked worried, then frustrated. "Odd, tell me what's going on NOW!" She shrieked.

Ignoring her, Odd shook his head to something Jeremie was saying. "She helped me fight off a leaf monster. If you don't go back, we'll have to tell her everything."

"XANA gets stronger every time we go back," Jeremie began, "maybe we should just-"

Yumi took two steps forward and depressed the 'enter' key. "Return to the past _now!_" she said firmly.

The world exploded in white light.

– Fin –

_Two down, eight to go. Sorry this is late – my internet has been sporadic._

_Taidine_


End file.
